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Mark Trail, 8/22/16

Is it sad, Mark? Is it really? Sad for the bats, maybe. Not sad for Woods and Wildlife Magazine’s clickthrough rate. Your article, given the snappy title “It Can’t Be Stopped. It Can’t Be Cured. And It’s Killing Every Bat On Earth” by W&W’s Associate Engagement Editor, saw a huge uptick on social sharing sites, with over 40% of readers scrolling far enough into it to register ad impressions in two different sponsorship zones. Bill’s looking for more Facebook-friendly click-harvesting hits from you — in fact, he’s hoping to get at least two of them out of your trip, tentatively titled “How Invasive Fire Ants Made Our Vacation A Tropical Hell” and “Boatsplosion! [VIDEO]”

Spider-Man, 8/22/16

“Oh, my! You’re looking for me? Hank Pym? The former Ant-Man? However did you track me down to the prominently labelled Pym Annex? Was it by following my nondescript car, which was assigned the ANTPYM license plate wholly by coincidence? I do value my privacy, but of course I’ll sign a glossy photo of myself for you. Oh, you don’t have one? Don’t worry, I have a whole drawer full of them, here at the Pym Annex.”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/22/16

Traditionally, Funky Winkerbean deaths have been agonizingly drawn out, which is why I’m really looking forward to Bull abruptly dropping dead from a rage-stroke by Thursday.

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Mark Trail, 8/20/16

Haha, remember all those boats that Mark rented using the Woods & Wildlife Magazine corporate credit card, which later got blown up? (The boats, not the credit card.) Mark would like to let you know, by wagging his finger somewhat condescendingly at you, that those massive boat explosions weren’t necessarily his fault, per se. Anyway, the boat he’s about to rent is going to blow up so hard, I think we can all agree.

Dennis the Menace, 8/20/16

I don’t really have anything to say about this panel on my usual menacing/non-menacing axis; I mainly want to know about the secret backstory of Dennis the Menace, where George and Henry go to parties at night and get super blotto.

Marvin, 8/20/16

Hey, remember back in 2011, when Marvin’s parents were trying to potty train him? Well now it’s 2016, and Marvin’s parents are trying to potty train him! To paraphrase Jorge Luis Borges, in the timeless universe of Marvin, potty-training Marvin is the only thing that has happened in the world, and it will go on happening endlessly.

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Mark Trail, 8/18/16

Oh say, it looks like this new Mark Trail storyline isn’t going to be about whales after all! It’s going to be about ants, specifically invasive fire ants, who presumably set up a nest in the corpses of this amorous couple two years ago and have now evolved into unstoppable killers. Anyway, today’s panel two is definitely the best ever instance of Mark keeping a straight face while a government bureaucrat spells out an entire URL over the phone for some reason. While there really isn’t room in the panel to structure the word balloons this way, I like to think that the actual dialogue is something like this:

“That’s doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou dot”

“Abbey–”

“hungry pests dot com”

“Abbey, this all–”

“slash the dash threat”

[a pause]

“This all sounds like–”

“slash imported dash fire dash…”

Gil Thorp, 8/18/16

Marty Moon runs a radio show entirely dedicated to high school sports (and, apparently, the legal ramifications of the deaths of high school athletes). But it’s a well known fact that Marty is “out of touch” with the kids who should be making up the bulk of his audience. Today we learn that he doesn’t even have an app that teens can download to their beloved smartphones to get push notifications about the news they care about, along with messages from Marty’s sponsors and corporate partners! No, they’re getting texts from their parents about stuff Marty’s saying on the radio, which strikes me as very difficult to monetize.

Dick Tracy, 8/18/16

“I mean, why would I shoot my food, right? I could, I guess. Like if I shot my food a bunch of times, that’d break it up into bite-sized pieces. But that seems like way more work than it’s worth. Still, you know, for fighting and stuff, I think guns are the way to go.”

Mary Worth, 8/18/16

Ugh, Tommy, all the street hustlers in My Own Private Idaho did cool drugs, like heroin. You get your pills from the damn CVS, Tommy. That’s not cool at all.